ALWAYS good to hear the revival of one of Merseyside’s enduring maritime rumours. This time it’s the return of the historic 1885 tall ship Wavertree to Liverpool from her current home at New York’s South Street Seaport Museum. Where this latest scuttlebutt comes from is a mystery to Captain Brocklebank but in the extreme unlikelihood of it becoming a reality and Wavertree, built for Liverpool’s Leyland Line, returns to her former home of Canning Dock, she must be well encased in a caring charitable trust far away from National Museums Liverpool and its Merseyside Maritime Museum’s clutches whose dire record on tall ship preservation (see De Wadden) speaks for itself. The shame is the dynamic Hamburg Maritime Museum bought the equally historic five masted barque Peking from South Street Seaport, moored for decades by Wavertree. Peking, once owned by Hamburg’s Flying P Line, is now the jewel in the museum’s crown. Pic: Seimen Burum